Why your business can’t live without brand guidelines
When staring down your marketing “to-do” list, creating a brand guide might not immediately rank in your top five. We know you have market research to conduct, websites to optimize, leads to cultivate, and content marketing strategy to perfect. The ROI on traditional marketing tasks is far easier to track than the nebulous benefits of a brand style guide and, let’s face it, you’re busy. But did you know that creating brand guidelines is one of the key ingredients of business success? Whether you’re a startup, a small-medium sized business, or a large corporation, you can’t afford to skip creating a comprehensive brand positioning document. Here’s why. Work less, get recognized more: In a blind branding test in which consumers were asked to name brands based on their company colors alone, branding powerhouses such as Google and McDonald’s were easily identified at a 100% success rate without their logos. Some logos, such as Coca-Cola and Harvard Business School, are so easily recognized on the global scale that artistic rights to the artwork are estimated in the millions. Each. Clear, consistent branding helps customers recognize your brand using visual cues so that certain symbols, colors, or imagery become synonymous with your products. As these visual cues build positive association between your brand and purchase triggers, your marketing department will need to work less (and spend less) to stay at the top of your customers’ minds. After all, seeing that signature Coca-Cola red is enough to inspire sales at most movie theaters. A brand guide or brand guidelines allow your organization to define what these cues will be and ensure they are consistently featured in marketing collateral. A brand guide is a shared language: A comprehensive brand guide also creates a shared language across all marketing channels so your team members can create emails, print ads, event marketing banners, and website content with ease. Having brand guidelines with all the design colors, fonts, tone, and information architecture guideline can reduce editing and churn during the internal production process, and get consistent collateral into market faster so you can – you guessed it – work less and get recognized more. Even the smallest teams will benefit from clear guidelines around when to use certain headlines, how to position text, and where and how a logo may be used. It turns the most tedious elements of design into a straightforward process, so your creative minds can spend less time double checking whether they are using the right shade of blue and more time dreaming up your next ADDY Award-winning campaign. Brand positioning within your corporate culture: Branding is also a translation of your corporate culture. For example, Google executives once admitted they chose the brand’s bold, primary colors because they wanted to build an organization around simplicity. They stripped away any unnecessary visual elements so this simplicity would shine. No frills, just results. Those same colors evoke the playful (sometimes childlike) nature of their corporate headquarters and echo a no frills, results-oriented work culture. The bright red, blue, and yellow of their logo would be as appropriate in a classroom or art studio as they are in the creative, casual work rooms and collaborative spaces inside Google offices. In this way, their branding choices reflect both their business principles and their corporate culture, setting a tone for customers, employees, and investors. Go ahead, ask yourself what your brand guide might say about your culture and what you’re telling your prospective customers or investors every time you release a new ad. Aid onboarding with brand guidelines: Having a clear correlation between brand guidelines and corporate culture not only helps external parties understand your unique value proposition, but allows employees to self-select and assimilate to how your organization works with ease. Brand guidelines allow new team members to get to work faster because they understand the expectations around their work, digest the tone you hope to set both in and outside the office, and live your brand’s mission and vision statement rather than just working on it. Brand guidelines are pivotal for business success because they allow each and every one of your employees to become an expert in your brand positioning. For ideas on how to refine your branding or create your first brand style guide, check out our work for more information on how we’ve helped other companies transform.
UVP is the new marketing MVP: Supercharge your value proposition
Your unique value proposition or “UVP” is the new marketing MVP and calling card of your business. Think of it is as your three-second elevator pitch. This one-sentence mission statement should clearly set the tone for your brand positioning and prime prospective customers to learn more. We might even go so far as to say that it’s the single most important piece of content on your website. Your unique value proposition answers at least one critical question for your customers, such as: what are you solving for them? How is your brand different from others? Or why should they be interested? Although every product marketing manager and production specialist on your team should be able to clearly explain your unique value proposition, brand positioning is first and foremost for your customers, so get painfully narrow on what makes your product different in their eyes. To craft a unique value proposition that really shines, pick one of these four angles to build from. EXPLAIN YOUR UNIQUE VALUE PROPOSITION: If you’ve never thought about your UVP before, this is the perfect place to start. Find an elegant, clear way to state exactly what your product is about and get it in front of your prospects. For example, new pet-sitting startup DogVacay gets directly to the point. Their tag line, “Find a loving dog sitter. Search thousands of trusted, insured pet sitters near you,” explains what their product offers in under 12 words. This framing is especially useful if you have a complicated product because it forces you to get to the heart of why your product is valuable. Consider a more complex product such as Givling, a crowdfunded game site that gives players the chance to win money while paying off other peoples’ student loan debts. Recipients and donors don’t necessarily need to be players, so their brand positioning has the potential to become convoluted if the UVP isn’t crystal clear. Givling answers the fundamental “what” by leading with, “Play Trivia. End student debt. Win cash.” There is no question about what you can do on their site no matter who you are or why you’re visiting. In other words, a perfect UVP. USE THE K.I.S.S. MODEL: K.I.S.S.: Keep it simple, silly. Your unique value proposition doesn’t need to be elaborate to be effective. Some of the most poignant brand positioning statements are just a few words long. CrowdTunes, a digital jukebox, has an amazingly simple, yet powerful value proposition. They invite users to “roll in and rock out.” The pithy, straightforward call to action captures both the tone and appeal of the brand. HubSpot, similarly, doesn’t get into the nitty gritty. They promise to “grow your business,” and trust that this hook is enough to entice visitors to delve deeper into their world of inbound marketing support. As marketers, we sometimes get so excited about our products that we feel the need to explain every feature and benefit in our unique value proposition. Resist the temptation and boil your UVP down to the single most important thing your customers care about and lead with that. Short, sweet, and to the point. THE EMOTIONAL APPEAL: For brands that offer more elective – rather than utilitarian – products, consider making an emotional appeal. Think: luxury, lifestyle, and hospitality brands. Norwegian Cruise Line is an amazing testament to how this type of brand positioning can work. Each of their cruise offerings leads with a reminder of what it means to be a “Norwegian:” Norwegians know their Saints (for their island itineraries), Norwegians chase the sun (in Mexico), Norwegians shop like mavens (referencing their onboard promenades). Their unique value proposition allows customers to project themselves into the brand’s lifestyle and imagine themselves as an insider. Resort clothing line Lou & Gray takes a similar approach. They remind customers to “get out there, our clothes are just along for the ride.” In each of these instances, the customer’s emotional journey is at the center of the UVP rather than the product itself. This can be a powerful persuasive tool to boost the perceived value of more expensive products. LEVERAGE SOCIAL PROOF: On the flip side, pragmatic products such as insurance, security, or business tools, can benefit tremendously from social proof. Framing your unique value proposition around statistics adds credibility to your brand and helps position your product against the competition. Web conferencing software GoToMeeting’s UVP lets customers know that “millions of businesses rely on GoToMeeting.” While Nationwide Insurance boasts that “95% of members recommend Nationwide car insurance.” While neither of these statements necessarily explains what the product does (because prospects probably already know), they do answer critical customer questions about their brand differentiators and why the product is valuable. Social proof can augment UVP’s in mature markets or for products where customers are extremely price sensitive. No matter how you choose to frame your UVP, the important thing is that your customers get something from your positioning statement. A good UVP can mean the difference between an engaged audience and blending in with the clutter, so take time to craft yours with care. Contact us for more ideas on how to tease out your brand’s UVP.
How buyer personas now drive inbound marketing leads
The art of inbound marketing lets customers find you rather than spending time, energy and money soliciting qualified (and sometimes unqualified) leads. This marketing strategy is the quintessential manifestation of fishing where the fish are. In plain words, you simply place your product in the path of your potential customers and let them do the work for you. Okay, we might be exaggerating a little here. For inbound marketing to successfully attract value able customers, you need to know exactly where to place your product and ensure its perceived value appeals to your prospective customers. Don’t worry, inbound marketing won’t put you out of a job … it’ll just make yours a whole lot easier. So, you may be asking yourself: What is a buyer persona, anyway? We’re glad you asked. Buyer personas 101: A buyer persona is a snapshot into your ideal customer’s psyche. Typically, a product may have several personas based on different customer archetypes that successfully engage with your brand. Many companies create a persona profile – complete with name, photo, educational background lifestyle, profession, and business needs. This makes it easy for marketers to role play or think as their buyer persona when discussing how to develop a marketing strategy or what content might resonate with them most. How do you create a buyer persona? To create a buyer persona, the recipe is simple. Data, data, and more data. Get your hands on as much qualitative and quantitative research about your customers as possible. Ask customers why they cancel their subscriptions, poll customers leaving your website, set up a focus group, or reach out over social media to gather sound bites and directional insight into your customer’s pain points and needs. On the flip side, consider investing in third party research, set up AB or multi-variate tests, and do some data mining to gather information about your buyers’ behavior. When you translate all this data into a buyer persona, you’ll find “ah ha” moments that can lead to prototyping and commercial innovation that will lead to success. Anyone can create a buyer persona, but seasoned marketing strategists and agencies and product managers are highly adept at this type of task. How does my persona drive inbound marketing? Once you have several buyer personas, you can use them to tailor your inbound marketing efforts. Paste your personas onto poser board and bring them into meetings. Let someone role play as a persona each session to generate customer-centric ideas. Give each persona to a marketer and have them research where they surf online, how they behave, and where they are shopping so you can advertise in those naturally aligned spaces. Having a tight buyer persona not only lets you think like your customer (and deliver better marketing content), but helps you frame where your inbound marketing efforts will be most effective. The results are more personalized and authentic marketing and a better customer-product fit. This leads to happier customers, greater customer lifetime value, and a bigger bottom line. In other words, everyone wins.
3 resort marketing tips that deliver results fast
As summer vacations begin getting planned, warm weather inspires people to seek warmer waters, and tourism season kicks into full swing, now is a great time to parter with a Florida digital marketing agency to supercharge your resort marketing strategy. Get ahead of your competition by harnessing these three great resort marketing tips this season. 1. Landing page strategy: When we say “landing page strategy,” the glamor of event marketing campaigns and sultry print ads may not come to your mind, but your digital marketing agency will probably feel differently. In light of Google’s recent commitment to reduce the appearance of AdWords advertisements in search results, paid digital media – and the landing pages that go with them – will become an increasingly important trend for 2016 and 2017. By eliminating advertisements from the right rail of search results, your landing page (and only three other paid results) have the opportunity to pop up above the fold on search queries, immediately followed by highly relevant organic results. The goal of Google’s change was to provide searchers with more relevant information. The result is that your landing page will become far more important to seal the deal for prospective guests. Your digital marketing agency can craft a landing page that yields highly qualified leads and draws customers to the top of the marketing funnel. And here’s an extra resort marketing tip for free: better leads means better business. 2. Partnerships and sweepstakes: Any Florida digital marketing agency worth its salt knows that partnerships and sweepstakes can revolutionize your resort marketing strategy. Offering a free stay, which can then be advertised via partner websites, email distribution lists, and mailers is a low cost in-kind exchange that often yields a gold mine of potential customer data. While this seems obvious, the main resort marketing tip and key to a successful sweepstakes or partnership is to align with other brands that naturally appeal to your customers. If you partner with brands that aren’t closely aligned or that use broad, rather than narrow, targeting methodology, your lead quality will dip (after all, people will do anything for a free stay at your resort, right?). Having a digital marketing agency that can fine tune your partnerships and break down the cost benefit analysis of what you’re offering for the sweepstakes, tackle any legal restrictions, and execute strategy reduces legwork on your end so you can focus on cultivating your resulting prospects. 3. Enjoy the halo effect: Resort marketing benefits from many of the same marketing psychology principles as luxury or lifestyle brands. Successful resort marketing helps prospective guests see themselves at your resort and imagine a lifestyle that goes with it. For this reason, endorsements can be a powerful tool. Chances are that your digital marketing agency already has relationships with a variety of local, national, or international tastemakers, celebrities, thought leaders, and industry names that can add a touch of excitement, authenticity, or luxury to your resort branding. Your agency will help you identify mutually beneficial opportunities to broker an endorsement. These relationships could be as small as a media mention or as elaborate as celebrity-hosted fitness classes and events. Ideally, both you and your endorser will benefit from this relationship. You’ll enjoy a halo effect of positive association, while your endorser may want increased press exposure, vacation perks, or some form of compensation. Your agency will help balance these needs so everyone wins. Resort marketing should be as fun and fabulous as the resort experience itself, so use these tips to breathe life into your traditional marketing campaigns and tried-and-tested lead generation efforts. These resort marketing tips not only help deliver results but break through the marketing clutter that can be distracting for your audience.
Top five things to consider when rebranding your business
If anybody knows that rebranding is a huge undertaking – it’s us. Before you get to the best part (new colors, logos, web design, and all the exciting creative pieces in between), it’s important that your rebranding initiative is grounded in strong strategy. When fleshing out your process for rebranding, here are our top 5 things to consider: 1. Assessing your existing brand value: Even if it’s time for a change, chances are your existing brand still holds some power. To help guide your rebranding strategy, take a step back and look at what’s being said about the company in the media, online, and in blogs. The existing conversation will help you understand your current brand value and make decisions about how much of that brand you want to keep and how much you want to refresh. A branding agency can also help you aggregate and assess this information — which is especially important if you want to put a monetary value around your old company assets or are considering going public in the near future. This assessment will help you understand what worked, what didn’t, and what elements of your current brand you want to protect. 2. Get to the “why” of rebranding: What customer or market insights are driving this change? If you are rebranding due to a string of bad press, your strategic approach should be radically different than if you are rebranding because you are acquiring new, exciting assets. If these changes are sensitive in nature, partnering with a branding agency may be your best bet to understand how to reach out to the market and drive positive results. If you’re simply adapting to a changing customer demographic, you may have it slightly easier but still need to get ruthlessly specific with your internal team about what’s motivating this change so they can get fired up behind the company’s new goals. This “why” will serve as a compass for all future decisions, employee questions, and forks in the road. If in doubt during the rebranding experience, simply ask yourself how that choice ladders up to your “why.” 3. Defining what makes your rebranding different: One of the most important steps in the process for rebranding a company is identifying competitive differentiators. What makes you, you? In many ways, rebranding a company is very similar to starting a new company or beginning a fresh entrepreneurial project. Your audience will need to understand your unique value proposition, what sets you apart from your competitor, and how you’re making your customers’ lives better. If you’re rebranding, you’ve probably already begun to anticipate a new customer need that they may not even realize yet, so don’t fall prey to the temptation of being a generalist. Sing those differentiators loud and proud and get specific about what customer needs you’re satisfying. In short, rebranding is a lot more than just a new name and logo. It fundamentally captures something new you hope to bring to the market – and getting clear on what that “something” is will help catapult the project to success. 4. Establish what success looks like: Speaking of success, you need to understand what that looks like for your company. Is it an increase in sales? A new customer base? A bigger share of the competitive wallet? Before you begin a rebranding project, determine how much time, money, energy, and resources you’re willing to allocate to the initiative and what you expect in return. Having clear milestones and measurable goals will level set expectations and set the new brand up for success. This also serves as a system of checks and balances to ensure you are on track with your targeted process for rebranding a company. 5. Executing your rebranding strategy: After all of that’s finished, it’s time to execute your rebranding strategy. That includes communicating to existing customers about the brand change and capturing the attention of new customers who are about to discover your organization. A branding agency is the quickest and most effective way to understand how to talk to these two very distinct audiences and what tools will be most beneficial in driving change. While you’re promoting the new brand identity, you also need to be reeducating existing clients about why the change occurred and how they still fit into your company ecosystem. This is a delicate – but important – balance. You’ll notice that we intentionally left out detailing the creative development stages from our rebranding check list. That isn’t to say that we don’t think this step is important (after all, you can’t rebrand without those elements), but rather that it’s easy to get caught up in the excitement of new creative or packaging and lose sight of the strategic insight driving your changes. A rebrand is the perfect time to hit the pause button on your business and make meaningful, lasting change that you can’t do when you’re wholly focused on the day-to-day. Well, what are you waiting for? Contact us today and together, we’ll transform your brand.
Effectively manage customer relationships in marketing channels
We know we’ve been harpin’ on this for a while, but although your customers may be the same across all channels, how you communicate with them across these channels is not a one size fits all model. Deep customer insights start with understanding your customer relationships inside and out. Strong customer relationships mean that you not only understand the product features that influence their decision making process, but that you also understand how they like to communicate, what information they need, as well as when and where they need it. To help you understand the nuances and importance of this distinction, we’ve broken out the top customer channels and the important distinctions between each. Web: Your website is the face of your company. It’s your biggest and best opportunity to showcase your brand’s personality, expand on your value proposition, and capture the heart and attention of your customer base. You can include as many product and service descriptions as you like, snapshots of your brand values, and a deep dive into your mission statement and authenticity as a company. Understanding why customers are coming to your website and what they’re looking for is key. Spend time digging into the information architecture of your site (a.k.a. what information is shown when and where), and deeply consider the user experience by looking at other industry leaders. If you need creative support or strategic insight, a digital marketing agency can definitely help. This is arguably the single most important aspect of your branding strategy in today’s digitally-driven world, so it’s a good place to splurge (or start). Social: Unlike your website, which presents static information outward to your consumer, social media is an opportunity for you to have ongoing customer relationships. You can directly answer their questions, address customer service issues, and understand their feelings about your brand. This channel is important because interaction tends to be more casual, more personal, and more tailored on an individual level. Social media helps you strengthen existing relationships and create brand advocates who will recommend your company or share their experiences in the digital marketing ecosystem. Customer relationships through your social media channels are likely farther down on the conversion funnel than first time visitors to your website, so your primary goal here should be to re-affirm your brand identity and share culture related updates and additional industry relevant information. A content agency can help bolster your posts to alleviate the time required managing this content in house. At the same time, you can also use social media as a real-time focus group to provide feedback on how you’re doing, how to improve, and even soft launch ideas or products. Media: Paid traditional media is a unique and quickly evolving channel. In previous years, it was used as the marketing bread and butter for everyone from the sole proprietor to the advertising agency, today, it works as a very top-of-funnel experience to drive general awareness about your brand. Paid media doesn’t hold the same authority it once did (because customers are more likely to trust social media or peer reviews than an ad in a magazine), so treat it as an introduction for your customers rather than a pure closing mechanism. Tease the brand values. Peak your customers’ interest. Media is a gateway that directs customers to your website or sales funnel, so understanding this distinction will help you target your messaging accordingly and provide proof that backs up your brand statements. Mobile: It’s easy to mix your mobile prospects in with your desktop website users, but the reality is that people searching your site on their mobile devices and tablets are likely at a different stage in the customer lifecycle and purchase journey. Mobile users are most likely looking for quick, high-level information (because let’s be serious, they’re either sitting at a red light or passively doing something else while also looking at your site). Very often, they are at the start of their purchase path and just beginning to get a feel for your company, so only the most crucial information from your website should be presented. However, mobile purchases are on the rise, and it is one of the fastest growing channels for conversion, so people may also be returning to the mobile site to complete their purchase after they’ve dug deep on the full desktop site or via social media. In this way, the mobile channel serves as bookends for your customer experience and should distill the most essential messages down to their essence. Organic search: Last, but certainly not least, organic search is an incredibly powerful tool to help manage your customer relationships. Understanding that customers coming in through this channel are likely very new and unsure of what they are looking for – is crucial. You must anticipate their needs by aligning your company to non-branded words that customers will search for and provide enough information so that they want to learn more. Prospects coming in through the organic search channel may benefit from a tailored landing page or web experience that formally addresses the search terms they used and the needs of that audience. Unlike your main marketing site, these customers are likely looking for something specific (even if they’re unsure of what that solution looks like yet), so you want to make sure they know you can deliver. While each channel is unique and different, they’re all important for the overall customer journey and experience. It’s tempting to say one is more important than the other, but knowing that potential customers often drift through many – if not all – channels before committing to a purchase will help you understand how this concert of information works together. Each channel is a key piece in the customer journey and an opportunity to show the heart of your brand. Visit our Digital Marketing services page to learn more.
“Hello from the other side:” Social listening effects
In 2013, Maker’s Mark made a decision that lead to a very serious problem – they reduced the amount of alcohol in their whiskey, a move that likely made sense on paper or in the boardroom. Not surprisingly, once word began to emerge, imbibers everywhere expressed outrage and after thousands of social media complaints and organized petitions, the company utilized social listening data and reversed course within a few days. The company’s response actually turned what could have been complete brand suicide into a social media win, and a positive experience. Not so much because they gave in fast to angry shouting, or even took action in the first place with little market research. It was more about listening to their current and potential customers, apologizing, trying to make things right and continuing forward with a strong relationship. It was also a perfect example of something we call social listening. True social listening is when you take extra effort to discover what people are saying about your brand online. This could found in comments or questions on very public forums like social media platforms, positive or negative feedback on review sites, or even opinions on personal blogs. Social listening blends fundamental customer service skills with digital marketing efforts. And businesses can go beyond their own social media and digital presence and utilize other methods, like SEO techniques, to track discussions and references, either getting involved in conversations – or at least observing what people have to say. Here’s why it makes sense. Easy market research With social listening and social listening tools, you’ll have more specific and thorough data about who is using your products or services and what they genuinely think about them. Just because your CMO decides that a particular strategy is a solid one, doesn’t mean your customers will buy into it. This can of course be a positive experience, as well as a negative one – as in the case with Maker’s Mark. A great company can learn from both types of feedback. If you partner with an agency to engage in social listening, you’ll be guided through data like: where your customers are coming from and how important your product is in their lives. You can take this feedback and shape future projects and even online content. Real-time results Before the digital marketing age, most companies had strict business hours and any customers who tried to contact them after these times were told to come back another day. Today, customers have the possibility to come from any time zone, anywhere around the world and provide feedback at anytime. By saying “we’re closed” may be frustrating or set a perception that you simply just don’t care. A smart strategy would be to put processes in place in order to provide customer assistance around the clock. For instance, the airline KLM has customer service staff that focus on email and phone support, plus 130 full-time social customer care employees who are strictly on social media. These types of efforts are responsible for an impressive 23-minute response time. Discover and follow the influencers If you listen hard enough, oftentimes there are super-users or prominent influencers who are using your product and talking about it positively to their respective audiences – even without you requesting or paying them. This type of authentic, extra exposure can get more people to experience your product than you ever thought imaginable, especially with a positive endorsement. If they already like your product, they might be willing to talk to you about your other products or spread the word about what’s new. Today’s consumers, specifically millennials, actively go out of their way to engage with brands highlighted by prominent social media influencers. Better retention A J.D. Powers study of 23,000 people in 2013 showed 67% contacted a business through social media for service needs. Related to this interest is a 2012 study from Gartner, which urged companies not to ignore social media comments, questions or complaints. Ignoring someone is as bad as not answering the phone or an email, and can lead to a 15 % increase in churn. The study’s conclusion warned companies to put mechanisms in place to accommodate what they anticipated would be a high rate of people interacting through social channel. So yep, you guessed it, listen to your audience on social and respond to them with an authentic brand voice. To learn about our expertise in Digital Marketing, visit our Digital Marketing services page.
5 social media marketing tips for restaurants that really work
For the American restaurant culture, 2015 was the year of enthusiastic nautical decor (boat ropes, life-sized buoys, natural and sustainable materials, Edison lightbulbs, contemporary color palettes), imaginative dishes including everything from briny olives to mashed potatoes to marinated pickles to Korean BBQ tacos (seriously, is it time for lunch?), and even more uber-elaborate cocktails with rare spirits, hand-cut herbs and artisan ice cubes. As we enter into a new year, industry leaders recognize the continuing shift towards a more relaxed, affordable, intimate, and collaborative dining experience. Culinary enthusiasts are seeking out restaurants that provide extremely friendly price points while also expecting a higher quality product. So as the competition continues to increase and evolve, it’s absolutely imperative for restaurant brands to maintain a strong social media presence that keeps them authentically engage with their audience. Here are five social media marketing tips from our team that will help you maximize your efforts: Consistency is key: Maintaining consistency on your digital channels is about more than the frequency of your message. Maintaining a consistent tone in your tweets, Facebook, and LinkedIn updates, while understanding your unique audience segments on each platform – is key. Developing and creating consistent, relevant, content is a ton of work, so it’s far better to start slow and steady. Despite popular belief that everything you post will go “viral,” a true social media marketing strategy should focus on long-term efforts – slow and steady wins the race! Also, by following this rule of thumb, this will provide your followers with a realistic expectation of when they will hear from you, creating a pattern of user behavior in respect to your brand. Think visually: We know that visual content is far more effective and leads to increased engagement, especially on Facebook, and restaurants are at a unique advantage because the products their customers care about most can be displayed visually. It’s an easy sell. So, take photos of your product! Leverage highly visual channels like: Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, and even Snapchat. Craft cocktails are in, and here to stay, so give your viewers what they want to see – your delicious food and awesome cocktails. Control the conversation: Your social media team members should be willing and ready to respond to questions and comments at anytime. Companies like Jet Blue, Nike, Air Asia, Starbucks, and Whole Foods rock customer service on social media. JetBlue makes it a point to respond not just to customers who @mention them, but also to customers who talk about the brand in general – even if they weren’t tagged in the post. This means that the company’s social media team is tracking and monitoring keywords and relevant hashtags extremely well so that ultimately, they can find and respond to more customers. Nike actually takes this one step further, and with over 4 million followers on Twitter, they’ve created a separate Twitter account specifically intended to responding to customer inquiries and issues (@NikeSupport). They’ve created a well-oiled customer service machine by responding to requests every few minutes. And by following this type of strategy, Nike customers feel their concerns are being validated while they’re receiving the timely customer assistance they require. Happy customers build brand ambassadors, and brand ambassadors generate recurring revenue. Sidebar: we know what you’re thinking…”Nike is a multi-billion dollar company with the resources to support that type of strategy.” Indeed they are, but the premise is still the same and equally important for your brand, no matter how large or small. Remember that consistency is key over quantity, so maybe you dedicate one or two days a week where you respond to all customer service inquiries and let your customers know when that day is. Practice makes perfect. Create plenty of ways for people to interact with all of your channels: The ultimate goal for any restaurant owner is to grow and maintain recurring traffic as it comes through the restaurant. Therefore, some of your posts should incorporate a call to action of some kind to inspire interaction from your viewers. Like, maybe you direct users to check out your site to receive information on special menu items only available to those who click through a specific link. Consequently, your website should also provide easy access to your different social media platforms while incorporating SEO techniques to attract customers who are searching for certain keywords and topics about restaurants. Other strategies, like email newsletters, could include unique and relevant info that they can’t receive through other social media platforms. You get the gist, provide opportunities for people to interact with your brand in unique ways. Invite collaboration: User-generated content is the social gods’ gift to the digital universe. Rather than having your team constantly create unique content for all of your channels, effective social media marketing also incorporates repurposing user-generated content. You can encourage customers to share their experiences with you via a specific hashtag, invite your customers to check-in to your restaurant to receive something in return, run contests and repurpose photos or video – the possibilities are endless. There you have it. With 77% of B-to-C marketers acquiring customers through Facebook, and over 90% of Twitter users reporting that they follow brands to receive special promos and discounts, a strong social media marketing strategy will continue to be vital for the success of restaurants within this competitive landscape. And on that note, we’re off to happy hour.
The top 4 Facebook marketing do’s and don’ts you should know
We’re gettin’ down to the nitty gritty of 4 Facebook Marketing Do’s and Don’ts, an article published from our very own Vice President of Strategy and Insight . Soak it up people! Originally published February 22, 2016 on BrandBlab. The Facebook marketing do’s 1. Visual content reigns – Start with relevant and compelling videos or high-quality images first in order to tell the story and support it with minimal copy. Utilize the new photo/video posting options by sharing multiple videos, photo album, photo carousel, or create a slideshow. 2. Be social – Seems obvious but socializing requires consideration and an openness to enter into a two-way dialogue with someone. Broadcasting and publishing content is a one-way monologue and doesn’t forge friendships. Take interest in what others are posting on and off your page and engage with them. Also tag those who are significant to the nature of your posts. 3. Spell check is your friend – Don’t ruin great content and social dialogue with typos and grammatical errors. Always run spell check and carefully proof every word and punctuation before you hit enter. Your digital language is representative of your brand’s personality. 4. Targeting – With the decline in Facebook page reach, post targeting is a feature that can get posts to the right audience. You can ensure that your posts are connecting with a specific demo with relatable interests. A minimum of 20 people must be in the target group. The Facebook marketing don’ts 1. #TooManyHashtags – Hashtags are not as actively used as they are on Twitter and Instagram. However, be sure not to flood your copy with hashtags and definitely avoid making up random non-trending hashtags as substitutes for phrases in your sentence. 2. The commercial – Organic content on Facebook should not be salesy or promotional in nature. That’s like going to a friend’s house party and instead of socializing, trying to sell merchandise out of a suitcase to the guests. Use Facebook Ads to strategically advertise your wares to the right audience seeking what you have to offer and leave your organic content to nurturing sincere relationships with your audience. 3. The short story – Do not write a paragraph worth of copy unless you want to ensure that no one read it. While Generation X and Baby Boomers are the growing demos on Facebook, their attention spans are not much greater than that of the younger generations. Keep it concise and limited to a sentence or two if at all possible. 4. Barking orders – There is absolutely no need to tell your audience to “click here for more,” “watch this video,” or “like this.” They will do everything you want them to do and more if you are compelling, relevant, and engaging with your content. After all, you should desire real fans and not those that feel obligated to follow your demands.
The biggest question to ask when starting a website design project
As a business owner, there are many questions you should ask yourself before embarking on a website design project, including: “what kind of website development platform do you want to use?”, “do you want to hire a web design specialist or build the site yourself?’, “are you willing to spend money on digital advertising?”, and many more. The single biggest factor you should consider before starting a website design project, however, is the purpose of your site. Defining the purpose of your website can seem like a deceptively simple task, but your goals for the site can have a profound impact on how you approach your website design project. To help you get started, we’ve outlined the top three most common goals for new websites. Before you ask yourself any other website design questions, tackle this one. You can use your response as a framework for the rest of your project. 1. Company information and brand awareness One of the most common purposes of many websites is to provide general information about an organization and build brand awareness. In this instance, your site would provide insight into your organizational history, values, and brand personality. These types of sites tend to use more traditional web design principles and easy-to-use information architecture so consumers can quickly find what they are looking for. If this is the goal for your website design project, you should feel comfortable using standard menu options and crafting content-rich pages packed with pictures and information. Just remember, your most important information should be front and center on the homepage to ensure newcomers get a clear first impression of your business. This is your opportunity to show off your company’s tone and establish a unique voice that resonates with your customers, so don’t be afraid to let your personality shine. 2. Searchability and SEO ranking On the other hand, if your goal is to make it easier for new customers to find your business, you may want to consider basing your website design project strategy around SEO principles. Search engines such as Google and Bing are the Yellow Pages of the internet. When customers search for words associated with your business, you want your website to show up first. Although you probably won’t have trouble ranking at the top of Google’s recommendations on brand-specific words such as your company name, you may be competing with many other companies on more general terms, such as the type of products or services you offer. Increase your chances of ranking by including internal and external links to relevant information and other websites associated with your top search keywords. Make sure your website text includes specific, relevant information about these terms so search engines can easily recognize and index what your site is about. You may also consider building a blog with your site to help establish your search ranking more quickly. 3. E-commerce sales platform Are you primarily planning to do business on your website? If so, you’ll need a credible, secure e-commerce platform. If you want your customers to buy products or schedule services and make payments online, your website design questions will focus largely on the type of platform you need and the security of your clients’ information. That isn’t to say the branding and content on your site isn’t important in this case, but rather, that your purchase flows will need a lot of extra love. Consumers often chose not to buy a product online if the e-commerce experience looks outdated, runs slowly, is confusing, or seems like it is not secure. If your goal is to conduct business and drive sales, your online purchase experience should be at the top of your to-do list. Framing your website design project questions around your site goals will ensure your website accomplishes what you need it to do. Then, once the foundation of your website project is complete, you can begin layering on additional functionality such as social engagement and new, digital technologies. Still have lingering questions before you begin your website project? Contact our team of web development experts to get started with ease!
